19 September, 2016

Mexican Chipotle Burger - Windsor, Canada - September 2016

They didn't even try and hide how small the patty was compared to the bun

Consumed on 16 September 2016

Location - McDonald's Walker Road, Windsor, Ontario Canada

Price - $3.37CAD = $2.56USD

Calories - ~400kcal

McDonald's Canada Walker Road Receipt September 2016

I haven't had a review from Canada on the blog since 2014 and that's long overdue since I'm actually from Canada, and I try to come back about once a year to visit family. My trips in both late 2014 and 2015 I came up empty handed as there wasn't really anything worth reviewing (I vaguely remember an not-so-special Angus burger last year). But my trip this year landed me right in the middle of 2 "McTasters" promo burgers, the first of which I'll be reviewing today, the Mexican Chipotle Burger.

McDonald's Canada Mexican Chipotle Burger - Windsor, Canada

I couldn't find much about this burger online but as it was only released a couple weeks earlier, but it seems that an Italian McTaster was released in Canada earlier in the year and this is just a continuation of that line. The McTaster option is a pretty new concept to me at least, and it seems that they are trying to sell value sized burgers (read: dollar menu) with premium toppings, which also demand a premium price tag, but I'll talk more about that later. The burger used the same sesame-topped, paprika-seasoned bun that also graced the Italian burger earlier in the year, and although it was large compared to the rest of the toppings in the burger, I didn't really find it all that flavourful. The sesame seeds on top were a bit hard, and if I didn't read on the official website that this was seasoned with paprika, I would have never been able to guess as it didn't really taste any different from a regular white bun. What it did have going for it however was a nice firm outer crust as it didn't feel as soggy as a cheap dollar menu burger bun would have been like.

It also looks like McDonald's Canada jumped on the Asia bandwagon to include nachos on top of the burger, I guess purely because its "Mexican" in theme. Unlike the recent Nacho topped burger I reviewed in Taiwan (and the one I just skipped in Singapore) this didn't use whole nacho chips, but rather small white, purple or red coloured strips of nachos. They added a bit of crunch, but were pretty much masked by the amount of sauce they included on both the top and bottom buns.

That sauce, was a Chipotle Aioli sauce, which was more reminiscent of something I would have had in Australia and not really in North America, that said it probably would have been with a bit of garlic mixed in, but it still wasn't half bad. They could have easily used 1/2 the amount the did, as it didn't really need to be on both sides of the bun. The last "Mexican" ingredient used on there was a slice of processed, supposedly Jalapeno infused "Monterey Jack" cheese. This is something I'm familiar with as I've visited the US enough, and it's a white cheddar cheese with bits of jalapeno mixed in. These cheese itself wasn't really that bad, and was noticeably better than the orange cheese they'd normally use, but I counted only 2 tiny pieces of Jalapeno in the cheese, so I didn't taste any even when I was hunting for it.

All in, this wasn't really anything bad, but it wasn't that great either. The "Mexican" toppings they use really reminded me of something they'd serve in the US, and not in Canada. The real problem I had was with the price. The beef used was the tiny patty used in a $1 hamburger, but as they were charging $3 for this burger, the rest of the toppings weren't really worth the $2 premium at all. If you were looking for something that was a bit bigger than a $1 burger and wanted to have something new, it's probably worth a try, but it's not something I would order more than once.